Mechanics
by LexLuthor13
Summary: Harold Saxon won the election, became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The next step was visiting the Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II. What's to worry about? Harold Saxon was always sort of...persuasive.


**Author's Note: **First off, a few caveats. Being a boring old Colonist—er, American, I make no claims as to understanding the particulars of what a Prime Minister does upon being elected as regards visiting the Queen, except to say that the custom is that he visits the sovereign in order to form a government in her name. Politics! Anyway, this means that there was no way to write this without at least acknowledging in some way Stephen Frears' 2006 film The Queen, and the early scene therein where Michael Sheen's Blair meets Helen Mirren's Elizabeth II. So I've decided to embrace the weirdness and treat it all as a highly scripted ritual in which the participants are bound to merely act and re-act. And of course the idea is that the Master, being 'always sort of hypnotic' is playing his old tricks on the Queen, too. So there's that. Elsewhere we made paltry and entirely shameless references to the following serials, only one of which doesn't feature The Master, but he's a Time Lord so chances are he knows what happened anyway, probably in one of his lucid moments?). Anyway: Pertwee's _Planet of the Spiders_ &_ The Sea Devils_, and Tom Baker's _Pyramids of Mars_ & _Logopolis_. I hope you enjoy this one, Readers!

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><p>He was amazed at how much it smelled. It was rank.<p>

This, this automobile in which he sat. Top of the line, said they. Top of their line, the stunted little apes. The kind of car a Head of State drives, or in which he is driven. They called it a Jaguar. X-6 or something like that. He couldn't care to know. Bullet-resistant plating around the bonnet and windscreen. Bullet-resistant. He chuckled at that.

_Bullets_, he thought. _Simple little things._

He ran his fingertips along the armrest, thin and supple grey leather and a chrome handlebar above. He pursed his lips thoughtfully and looked up. Out the window.

The short distance from the edge of Hyde Park down to the Palace.

He breathed deep again. The Jaguar was rank. Filled with processed odours. His motionless, expressionless driver, hands clamped to the wheel, absorbed in his duty. No consideration for anything beyond it. How these people programme their servants into vacuity.

He scoffed. _My kingdom for the Nestene._

And then she spoke. Faithful Lucy, sitting next to him, one leg crossed neatly over the other, a proper lady never giving anything away for free: a trick learned from deportment school or wherever she'd learned normal people behaved.

Faithful Lucy leaning in close and saying, "Harry, what's wrong?"

One of his eyebrows rose slowly. His face kept the same disaffected, distant look. Well-practised in his private moments. Outside, the people were lining the streets. Waving their little flags, smiling their little smiles. Indulging their little lives. How he hated it.

And tried to remember a time when he was more sedate.

He faked a smile and looked at her. And said, "Nothing dear." And gave her a fake kiss, deep and passionate, articulated with the messiness of a schoolboy. Not that she would notice. Poor, stupid, faithful Lucy. Then he pulled away and touched the tip of her nose and said, "Nothing at all."

"Prime Minister," the driver said from up front. "Entering the Palace now, sir."

He cleared his throat and straightened his tie.

The Jaguar slowed to a stop. Outside one of the Palace lickspittles pulled the door open.

Saxon put a foot on the ground. Waited.

"I'm so proud of you, Harry." She said it, as ever, with the same lustful and lost glint in her eye.

_Yes_, he thought and stared into her eyes. _Proud of your Master._

He touched a hand to her chin. And stepped out.

She followed him into the Palace. All the while, the rest of the lickspittles came and went around him, stopping as much as they could in their tracks with a curt "Sir" here and "Prime Minister" there. _Respectful_, he thought. _Respectful and terrified._

_That's good, isn't it? Isn't it good?_

He smiled.

The equerry met Saxon and Lucy at the door. Stuck one mephitic arm, covered in pulped and blacked cotton and ceremonial gewgaws, the likes of which Saxon had, also, not cared to learn about, toward the main hall and smiled his practised smile. An ancient, hunched man with folds for a face and thin wires for hair.

Saxon raised an eyebrow and glared around the Main Hall. Ornate chandeliers, three of them, dangling and glowing underneath an impossibly white ceiling. Gold and marble and irreplaceable Persian rugs.

He'd been to Persia once. Back when there was a Persia. Oh how Xerxes had hated him for the failed little jaunt up to Greece. He had relished the news of their route at the Hot Gates. The sand was another matter entirely though…

_Stupid little apes_, he thought again.

Ahead, the equerry clapped his hands. He was talking, but Saxon couldn't care as to the details. Vaguely, he started listening. Figured it was important. "When we reach the audience room," the equerry said, "I will knock. We shall go straight inside. Standing by the door, we bow, from the neck. I will introduce you. The Queen will extend her hand. You go to her, bow again, then shake her hand."

Saxon and Lucy followed at a respectful distance. And the equerry kept blithering. Saxon turned around, mid-step and made a funny face to Lucy. Crossed his eyes and slacked his jaw and stuck his tongue out to one side.

Lucy chuckled and then pressed a hand against her lips. No giggling allowed in the Palace.

Saxon turned back around, slid his hands into his pockets and resumed the affected face of a serious politician. The equerry hadn't noticed. Shame, that.

The equerry stopped at the top of the stairs. Clasped his hands together and looked squarely at Saxon. "A couple of other things," he said. "It's ma'am as in ham, not ma'am as in farm. When you're in the presence, at no point must you show your back."

Saxon cocked his head and smiled.

"You must practise that a lot. Suppose you have to say it to everyone who comes through. Doesn't it ever get tiresome?"

The equerry only frowned a little; a quick little flash downwards of his eyebrows. Disappointed, maybe, in the Prime Minister.

"No?" Saxon said. "Little bit?"

The equerry turned and rapped twice on a vast white door. Then pushed it open.

Her Majesty the Queen sat on the end of a white davenport, gilded at the edges. Her hands neatly on her lap, her handbag propped against her leg.

Saxon put on the fake smile again. The equerry bowed and Saxon followed a second later.

Then the equerry backed out of the room. Saxon took a breath and stormed forward. The Queen stood and extended her hand. He gave it a vigorous two shakes and said simply, "Your Majesty."

"Mister Saxon," she said. "What a joy to see you again."

He waved his hand at that. And started the act. "Oh well, the joy is on my side, your Majesty."

"Your wife must be proud, yes?"

"Oh yes," Saxon said. "Overjoyed in her way. My dear, faithful Lucy, you know, Your Majesty, she's from a privileged lot, but, oh, she's somewhat subdued. Won her junior bowl at Hampden and didn't even tell her parents. Frightfully well-behaved."

"One sympathises, Mister Saxon."

"Yes," he said fondly.

"Do pass my congratulations on to your dear wife, Mister Saxon."

"I shall, Your Majesty."

"Now, shall we get down to it?"

He had been astonished at the mechanical nature of it all. Statements, response, statement, response, generic pleasantry injected here.

And how she was staring into his eyes the whole time.

Entranced.

None of it meant to be genuine, or even really sane. Stupid little monkeys faking happiness and cosmic awareness. _Stupid little monkeys, stupid stupid stupid knuckle-dragging half-baked primates spinning around throwing their own_—

He raised an eyebrow. A minor way to bring himself back. He just couldn't get away from the simian parallels.

And wondering why it was he kept coming to this place. This, this Earth.

The Queen became a distant simulacrum of herself. She was speaking to him, and he was responding, but not really. He had the presence of mind, and _what a mind_, he thought with inward joy—the presence of mind to separate himself from his own immediacy. To drift, as the apes might say, and to think.

To think of the Doctor. _Oh that Doctor…_

_How he loved playing with Earthlings. How he got a little thrill out of destroying their lives. Not that he would ever admit it, but…oh, that Doctor. Destroyer of Worlds, that one._

The Doctor and his vacuous lady friends. As a littler sampling of the whole stinking human race: terrified mongrels who feigned agreement to get what they want. In a perverse way, one he didn't like to talk about, it almost impressed him.

The ways in which they covered themselves.

He frowned.

Where he was, or could have been, right now. As Harold Saxon sat mewling with the Queen, the Doctor—oh, that Doctor—where could he be?

_Metebelis again, maybe? _

_Taunting the Martian tyrant?_

_Maybe face down in the gutter again, dying from a sad fall._

He sniffed the air. Deep and greedy.

Looked at The Queen, babbling away.

This was a game at which The Master was adept: the battle of opposing forces, gauging, sizing and pressing one's advantage. To strike, to seek, to humble. He supposed the American idiom might have been something like fencing, or sharpening one's claws. Never the less, the diplomatic game was an old one for the Master. Himself, against a single, talented opponent.

_Hm. _

He thought of the last time he'd fought a single-talented opponent.

A lifetime ago, really. He was a different man then.

Fencing the Doctor in a basement.

_How improper…_

The Queen had been speaking the whole time. Saxon lost in his internal narrations.

"…And I do hope, Mister Saxon, that the limits of your vision are to be made clear in the future, regarding these somewhat paranormal happenings?"

"Your Majesty," he said and smiled again. "You refer of course to the destruction of Big Ben? The ghosts, the Christmas Star?"

She made an agreeable nod. "I do hope we may not witness another public display of force on our own soil?"

"Not at all, Your Majesty. Shoot first, ask questions later, as they say—that was the programme of my predecessor. Not me. Not Harold Saxon."

She looked around nervously. "You needn't depose yourself to me. Nor would I expect you to follow blindly the advice of this body."

"Of course," Saxon said.

"Merely to open yourself to the concept," she said. "That this body is to advise and consent the government of which you are shortly to be head, Mister Saxon."

He smiled.

She kept saying his name. He liked it that way.

The network was working.

His name. Just the sound of it…

And the smile. Always the smile.

"Now," she said. "If there's nothing else, I believe we have some business."

"Yes, Your Majesty," he said and took a knee. Kissed her ring and said it mechanically. Perfectly. Had he not been so fond of improvisation and his own flair for the language, he might have merely recited the words as would a fourth-former. A boring child reading boring words.

Which of course it all was. But he relished in acting the opposite.

In being the head of a system he not only hated but wanted to strip-mine. For Gallifrey. For victory.

For himself.

"Your Majesty," he said. "My party has been chosen by election to form a government in your name. And if you accept, the custom is to say yes."

He got it wrong. And he didn't care.

And he looked up at her. And when she met his eyes, she didn't care, either.

She merely said, "I accept."

Saxon stood and straightened his jacket. The Queen turned and rang her bell for the equerry.

Then other things happened. Things for which Saxon, as usual, couldn't care. Weekly visits with the Queen. The formation of a government, the appointment of ministers.

And putting the final pieces into place.

Putting exacting, finishing touches to the _Valiant_.

All of it mechanical.

His new favourite word.

_The industry of this planet. To think what it might all be used for._

The end came with astonishing suddenness.

Leaving the Palace and kissing Lucy and going down to meet the press.

He smelled him.

Of course he daren't be seen performing the act, an admittedly esoteric one, and not really smelling at all, but think of smelling, he told himself. And by extension the rest of the monkeys.

He'd found the Doctor.

The signal was faint and new Just arrived. But it was here. It was here and he was here and they were coming and then.

_Oh_, he thought. _Oh that Doctor…_

It had been so long. What, a hundred…trillion years?

Then he was at the bottom of the stairs and the cameras were on him and the news presenters were narrating further metres away.

He clapped his hands together and put on the false face. And spoke to his people.

"This country," he said. "Has been sick. This country needs healing. This country needs medicine. In fact I'd go so far as to say that what this country really needs, right now, is a Doctor."

And then he smiled.

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><p><strong><em>The End...<em>**


End file.
